Waters of Mars
A new computer-generated map of Mars shows the Red Planet once had a huge ocean that covered much of its northern hemisphere.
Scientists at Northern Illinois University and the Planetary Institute in Houston say the rusty rock was very wet in its early days - with about one-third of its surface covered in water.
The map shows valleys between the equator and mid-southern latitudes forming a belt around the planet, hinting at a massive northern sea and a lot of rain.
Tomasz Stepinski, a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, told Universe Today: "The presence of more valleys indicates that it most likely rained on ancient Mars, while the global pattern showing this belt of valleys could be explained if there was a big northern ocean."
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
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